I've been in a keeper league with a bunch of friends for years and we use Sportsline to take care of everything. It can accommodate anything you want, other than it entering the rosters in an auction league, which we use. We just use the chat feature in the draft room to conduct the auction. Lots of player info, you can compare players head to head, add/drops are easy, standings, messages and transactions are all on the front page, you can post polls, it is really good. I played in one of their pay leagues one year, but there is just not as much fun for me competing against people I don't know that much. So I just create a few free teams on Yahoo for that, and stick to our keeper league for the serious comp.

If you could give grades for each of those areas across all of the platforms, thats what most people would be interested in.

Personally, Ive played Yahoo, CBS, TSN, ESPN, and Sandbox.
I like Yahoo's Interface and draft software the most - probably because color and graphics dont do anything for me and Yahoo tends to load faster. I like CBS ability to customize stat research that Yahoo doesnt offer - unfortunately - like ESPN and TSN - each of their interfaces is bulky and slower than Yahoo's. If Yahoo provided the kind of stat research the others do with their interface it would be far and away the better sight.

Customization on Yahoo is also lacking, and if you play in an auction or division oriented league, then you have to go with one of the others.

Customer support on Yahoo is non existant - if you have a problem, tough. The others are much more user friendly from reports Ive heard.

Finally, I just want to encourage this discussion to stick to pertinant information - who cares if you have idiots in your league or if Yahoo or TSN doesnt update their most added/dropped hourly or whatever. Compare the platforms - thats it.

Cornbread Maxwell wrote:Finally, I just want to encourage this discussion to stick to pertinant information - who cares if you have idiots in your league or if Yahoo or TSN doesnt update their most added/dropped hourly or whatever. Compare the platforms - thats it.

Uh... because that's a valid concern for people joining public leagues, if not the top concern? You may only care about one specific thing, but I don't see why the discussion should be limited to focus only on what you care about; to those of us who play public leagues, we do "care" about idiots, and that is a comparison of one aspect of the platforms. I personally don't care as much about your concerns, but I wouldn't suggest that the discussion should be limited to what I care about most to the exclusion of your concerns.

Cornbread Maxwell wrote:Finally, I just want to encourage this discussion to stick to pertinant information - who cares if you have idiots in your league or if Yahoo or TSN doesnt update their most added/dropped hourly or whatever. Compare the platforms - thats it.

Uh... because that's a valid concern for people joining public leagues, if not the top concern? You may only care about one specific thing, but I don't see why the discussion should be limited to focus only on what you care about; to those of us who play public leagues, we do "care" about idiots, and that is a comparison of one aspect of the platforms. I personally don't care as much about your concerns, but I wouldn't suggest that the discussion should be limited to what I care about most to the exclusion of your concerns.

fair enough.

If public leagues are your thing, then Im sure who joins them is extremely important to you - no doubt. What about pay formats - do you pay to play or not? Wouldnt that help with owner activity and commitment?

But, just to humor those of us who dont play public leagues and want to rate the sites based upon some kind of set criteria, would you mind giving grades to each sites' interface, draft software, customization, stat research, and user support?

How many days/weeks in advance are you able to set your lineup in CBS? This is an option in Yahoo (Free) that I like very much and couldn't live without. If I am gone on vacation I like to set my roster in advance.

I think if you want to do a fair comparison, there are many many options you have to look at and I haven't seen anyone get into that much detail yet.

Cornbread Maxwell wrote:Finally, I just want to encourage this discussion to stick to pertinant information - who cares if you have idiots in your league or if Yahoo or TSN doesnt update their most added/dropped hourly or whatever. Compare the platforms - thats it.

Uh... because that's a valid concern for people joining public leagues, if not the top concern? You may only care about one specific thing, but I don't see why the discussion should be limited to focus only on what you care about; to those of us who play public leagues, we do "care" about idiots, and that is a comparison of one aspect of the platforms. I personally don't care as much about your concerns, but I wouldn't suggest that the discussion should be limited to what I care about most to the exclusion of your concerns.

fair enough.

If public leagues are your thing, then Im sure who joins them is extremely important to you - no doubt. What about pay formats - do you pay to play or not? Wouldnt that help with owner activity and commitment?

But, just to humor those of us who dont play public leagues and want to rate the sites based upon some kind of set criteria, would you mind giving grades to each sites' interface, draft software, customization, stat research, and user support?

Im sorry for apparantly offending you originally.

No you didn't offend me; it's all good I was just wondering why you thought what I talked about in my first post was irrelevant but thanks for being cool about it. In terms of pay, yes, everything except Yahoo basic is pay, from $20-30 and this does pay a big role in the level of competition. It's a lot harder, generally to draft-and-run when you're paying $25 bucks rather than nothing. It still happens sometimes, especially when people feel their out of competition, but it's MUCH less prevalent.

Here's some grades; since I'm not in custom leagues I can't really speak much to user support or customization beyond interface customization though since the only private leagues I do are always Yahoo free (though that will probably change next year).

CBS
Interface- A-
Draft- A (lets you see pics, stats, 3-yr stats right from the draft page, only problem is there's no listing of which positions you've filled, but I just keep track of that by hand).
Stats/Articles- B
Competition/Participation- B+ ($150 prize helps)

How many days/weeks in advance are you able to set your lineup in CBS? This is an option in Yahoo (Free) that I like very much and couldn't live without. If I am gone on vacation I like to set my roster in advance.

You know what I don't see the specification in the rules but- "Deadline is 30 minutes before gametime on the first day of the period," and I believe you can set your lineup for next week at any time after that period (a week) begins, but I don't think you can set for weeks in advance so seven days it appears.